Thread: Police, church restore nghood harmony approve day labor ctr

Published: 11.15.2006
Police, church restore neighborhood harmony
Collaboration a model for solving future conflicts
CLAUDINE LoMONACO
Tucson Citizen
Seventy-two-year-old Manuel Bernal no longer has to walk through clusters of day laborers when he leaves his house at the corner of Ninth Avenue and 23rd Street because the laborers are gone. They're down the street now, in the parking lot of a new day labor center, where they occasionally chat with police officers on bicycles about employers who stiff them.
It's a dramatic difference from just a year ago, when police were targeting the laborers and, on one occasion, backed up a U.S. Border Patrol raid on the site where men have gathered for decades hoping to find a day's work.
The change is a result of a coordinated effort by the Tucson Police Department, Southside Presbyterian Church and city leaders to resolve persistent tensions between local residents and day laborers who would often obstruct traffic in the neighborhood.
Residents are thrilled with the results.
"There's no problems now," said Benny Allen, who lives on 23rd Street and had complained to police. "Now there's no beer bottles, nothing. The workers are where they should be."
Police say they are now free to go after drug dealers and prostitutes, and even the workers say they are better off.
"We're more protected now," 25-year-old Rafael Ruelas said early one morning in the parking lot at Southside, 317 W. 23rd Street which runs the day labor program. "The people from the center (note the license plate numbers) of the employers so it's easier to get paid."
City Councilman Steve Leal, who facilitated dialogue between neighbors, the church and police, credits all parties with working together to solve a complex problem and points to the collaboration as a model for how the city can work with neighborhoods.
"It was a long-standing, bitter history that had soured and frustrated a lot of people," Leal said, "and everybody involved contributed to turn it into something that really works."
Tucson police began cracking down on the day laborers last year in response to neighborhood complaints. On Nov. 14, 2005, Tucson police helped coordinate a Border Patrol raid that netted 19 illegal immigrants. In the next months, police followed up by ticketing workers and employers for obstructing traffic. The crackdown increased tensions and fears that local police were getting more involved with immigration issues, but it did little to get the laborers off the sidewalks, front yards and streets where local residents said they were a nuisance.
Police Chief Richard Miranda recognized that the efforts weren't accomplishing much.
"There was a lot of negative press and distrust between the police and the community and the people who were using the day labor process here," he said, "and the last thing that I wanted was distrust between the community and the police department. So I asked for a chance, for an opportunity to fix it."
Over the summer, a special unit within the department, the Targeted Response Unit, identified an area around the church - from Interstate 10 to the railroad tracks east of South Second Avenue, and from 22nd Street to 25th Street - as a trouble spot.
"We got 577 calls from the area in six months," said Sgt. Ron Zimmerling, who leads the team. "That's a lot."
The unit, which used to be called the "Crime Prevention Unit," targets areas with high call rates. As with the two other areas the unit has focused on, Hedrick Acres and Amphi Neighborhood, the calls weren't about violent crimes such as murders or rapes but more about issues affecting the quality of life, such as drug dealing and prostitution, Zimmerling said.
A three-person team, including Zimmerling and officers Felix Angulo and Frank Carrizosa, began work in mid-August. They set out on bicycles and knocked on more than 300 doors to talk to residents and businesses about neighborhood problems. Residents reported seven drug houses and identified the day laborers around Southside and the Casa Maria Soup Kitchen as sources of tension.
The police also spoke to the day laborers, knowing they would have to gain their trust if they were to develop a long-term solution.
"We aren't here as INS," Zimmerling said, leaning into his bicycle and referring to the government agency formerly known as Immigration and Naturalization Services. "We're here to deal with neighborhood problems. We're here to improve the quality of life."
Tucson police do not routinely ask a person's immigration status. Miranda has expressed concern that enforcement of immigration laws by city police would prevent immigrants from reaching out to law enforcement.
The team took its findings to Southside and Casa Maria, where homeless clients would sometimes litter and loiter in the surrounding neighborhood, and asked for help.
At the same time, members of Southside Presbyterian Church, who had been working on starting a day labor center for the last three years, were finally ready to open a center at their parking lot along South 10th Avenue. After three years of fundraising and applying for permits, they built a bathroom and laundry facility to service the day laborers and supplement their shower program for the homeless, also at the church. They opened the center in mid-September, just as police came to them with their findings.
Over the next six weeks, the police team initiated a plan to implement changes. During the first two weeks, Southside agreed to ask the workers to come off the street and onto the parking lot. The following two weeks, the police would step in and ask workers to do the same. Not until the final two weeks would police give tickets for such violations as blocking traffic.
The plan worked so well that by the time police were ready to ticket, "there was nothing for us to do," Zimmerling said. "In all, we had to ticket just two workers."
For neighbors, the change has brought peace of mind.
Last year, during the police crackdown, day laborers would often take off running and jump over a long block wall that separates the church from a housing development and into resident Vicky Rambo's backyard.
Workers no longer jump the wall, she said, but the early- morning sounds from day laborers in the parking lot do. Council member Leal agreed to pay for a higher wall with discretionary funds from his office to block the sound.
The increased police presence has helped the church better protect its clients, said church elder Josefina Ahumada.
Drug dealers, addicts, and prostitutes used to mix in and prey upon the day laborers and homeless using the shower program, but the increased police presence has largely taken care of that problem.
"Eliminating those bad actors has made us feel like it is a safer place to be," Ahumada said, "and that's not something we as church folks could have done without the police."

http://www.tucsoncitizen.com/daily/local/32629.php



FYI, Southside Church is Revrend Fife's old church, the convicted felon Rev. that started the "Sanctuary Movement." Fife is also involved in the border aid group No more Deaths . Chief Miranda always says that the illegals won't report crimes if they have neg. experiences with the police however illegals who are victims of border bandits contact law enforcement all the time after they've been ripped off or beaten. Councilman Leal is good buddies with Raul Grijalva...

Oh yah, and I forgot to mention that if they found 19 illegals on one raid there a year ago, imagine how many more there are there today and how many came and went over the last year...